


I Will Not Worry For You

by Chanter



Series: Not Alone [2]
Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Air travel, Alternate Universe, Anxiety, Developing Friendship, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Friendship, Gen, Languages, Loneliness, Magic, Platonic Affection, Pre-Canon, Probable Canon Divergence, differing frames of reference, discussion of agency, intrusive ideation, Émilie unbroken
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-06
Updated: 2019-04-06
Packaged: 2019-11-19 11:41:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18135284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chanter/pseuds/Chanter
Summary: AU.  Caught flat-footed in a role reversal thousands of meters above China, what a way to go.  Émilie and Duusu make one leg of the journey to Paris, but not without incident.





	I Will Not Worry For You

Émilie spends nearly all of their outbound flight from Lhasa wide awake and rigidly upright in her seat, one hand clutching her purse strap, the other toying compulsively with the zipper pull that she dares not move more than fractionally along its track, and if Duusu hadn't first suggested this particular means of carrying him safely back to France and then assured her, twice, that he'd absolutely be fine traveling in there, she'd be even more terrified of suffocating him than she already is.  Her stomach yanks itself into an ice cold cast iron knot every time she so much as thinks that word, never mind its meaning, and one mental image of the positive expanse, because it surely would be to a creature so small, of her bag's black not-quite-satin lining is enough; she disentangles from her seat belt and bolts for the minuscule airplane restroom just as a flight attendant announces their upcoming descent toward Beijing.  

She knows she's being silly.  She knows her bag isn't airtight.  She knows Duusu's explanation of his own needs, his knowledge of himself, is what should be carrying all the weight here - surely carried some, because why the hell else would she have agreed to - oh lord - she slams the toilet door, ignores the lock, and nearly pops her purse's zipper free of its teeth as she scrambles to create an opening wide enough to both look and, far more importantly, breathe through.  "Are you alright in there?  Duusu--!"  

The tiniest, sunniest mouse-ortolan peafowl in the world pops clear of her handbag and into view in a fluttering rush.  Émilie jerks back fast, catches the barest velvet brush of a feather to the tip of her nose anyway, and is abruptly and truly dizzier than she should be with relief.  "I'm fine!  It's a little dark, but I can hear everything, and I like the scent you wear.  I--" he hovers at her eye level, looks her in the face and frowns, abrupt and genuine.  "Oh. Are you still concerned about me riding in there?  Please don't worry, Émilie.  I'm alright, really!  There's a gap next to the closure where the light gets in, so I have plenty of air and as much room as I need.  I promise."  

A gap where the--oh.  Of course.  Émilie is suddenly, inanely grateful there's no mirror in most airplane toilets.  The sensation of heat flooding her cheeks is enough all on its own.  "I--ah, damn," she murmurs, face still undoubtedly pink.  "Now I feel silly." 

Now her kwami - hers? HER kwami? good lord, that's still a lot to process in about five different ways - looks puzzled, and that's not all he looks. "Why? You were concerned about me," he says softly, almost wonderingly, and his eyes are shining just a little bit more than the flat overhead lighting can account for.  "My safety was important to you.  That's very kind.  I like it best when my chosen are kind.  Besides," he adds more brightly, "you've never met a kwami before.  You heard what I told you, but you'd never seen for yourself.  You're a new human to me, but I'm all the way new to you." 

Émilie blinks. Caught flat-footed in a role reversal thousands of meters above China, she thinks a little giddily, what a way to go. If she weren't still halfway to chewing her own nails, she might laugh at her own wobbling humor. "That's what I mean," she says instead. "You're new to me, but that doesn't mean you should have to explain things over and over. I should have believed you the first time, to say nothing of the second, or now. I'll get a well-deserved lecture from a good quarter of my friends at home if I ever tell them about my justifications for--wait a minute, what am I saying?"  A pause, and then, lower still, because she does not want to frighten half a planeload of mixed strangers and colleagues by talking to, for all they know, no one at all while in the loo, "I'm sorry, Duusu.  I--"  

A half-formed continuation of that thought, containing words like 'assumption', 'person's agency' and 'trusted you' shrivels before it reaches her mouth, because all her new friend's expression shows now is surprise-tinged gratitude and what she's fairly sure is fondness.  "You don't need to be sorry, Émilie," he says, like she's done nothing worse than sneeze a bit more loudly than usual. "You're a brand new chosen, and you're still learning. Being new and thoughtful aren't things to be sorry for. At least, I don't think they are." 

Émilie's not sure if she and Duusu constitute the two halves of a role reversal sketch, or if it's better termed a trope inversion mini arc by this point. Whatever it is, it's stolen all her expectations of usual interaction and ejected them straight out the airplane window, and the lingering guilt left behind (along with a healthy dose of grateful bewilderment) is evidently all on her. That's probably a tired trope of its own, she thinks, the dear struggling white woman--white... human? who somehow gets it right even when she messes up, and--ugh, she's overthinking this. Figuring out the complexities of interspecies relations and human mores can wait, she tells herself in as firm a mental voice as she can manage, until you're not in a domestic airliner's bathroom.  So can sorting just how much of the other's history each of you is missing. Have those conversations later if you want. Right now, believe him. Doing anything else is just making the same mistake you already made all over again. 

That shuts her brain up, at least for the time being. 

"You," she says, and her smile might be small and wobbly, but it's also genuine enough to stay in place once she attempts it, "are being far more forgiving of me than I..." learning, right, still learning, "... than I think I deserve in this situation, and that's a long story?" The barest pause for breath. "Thank you, mon ami." 

"You're welcome," Duusu answers, and though he's clearly serious about it - his tone tells that tale in one - he's still smiling at her, and it's reaching his eyes. "Ma nouvelle amie." Émilie will never deny the succession of tiny fireworks that go off somewhere behind her ribs at that phrase. Never. There's a soft rustle, warm feathers sweep the shoulder of her blouse just for a second, and then her kwami is diving back into her open handbag and out of sight. When he speaks again, his voice is just that little bit muffled for the cloth between them. "Do we need to go out again before we dock, or can we stay in here? The woman outside said something about land. I've never traveled this way before, but aeroplanes don't dock quite like riverboats, do they? Do we need to be ready when we reach the aerodrome?" 

If that's not a cue, Émilie thinks a bit bemusedly, I'm not sure what is. Not to mention a clue or two, but that can wait, because the history conversations have to. 

"We definitely need to go out again," she clarifies, then leans sideways and pulls the toilet's flush the better to keep up if not appearances, then at least expected audio (eww). "I suspect the woman who was talking about land will be upset with me if I don't come out of here before too much longer--is this alright?" She counts it a victory that she barely flinches at all when she starts to slide her handbag's zipper closed. Duusu's cheerful affirmative helps. So does the fingertip's length of space she leaves between the closure and the end of the track, three or four metal teeth wide and unremarkable to the casual eye. So the light gets in, she thinks, and her stomach twists with fresh guilt. But, kindness, she thinks in a mental voice that sounds not unlike her new friend's own, and it settles. No one gives her more than a glance as she exits the facilities. She's in luck, or rather luck again; the 'fasten your seat belts' sign pings into visibility just as she reaches her seat. She positively drops into that seat; lingering issues and long future discussions notwithstanding, she knows fading adrenaline when she feels it. 

After that, customs is a positive breeze.


End file.
